As Philippe Ariès explains in his landmark history on death in Western society, perspectives on burial grounds have shifted over the course of several millennia. Prior to the rise of Christianity, graveyards were situated outside the confines of the city, with legal texts like the Twelve Tables and the Theodosian Code stipulating that all bodies, including urns and sarcophagi, must be left outside of the city.[1] Although hygiene contributed to these verdicts, so did cultural concerns regarding the dead returning and bothering the living.[2] Beginning in Africa and spreading to Spain and Rome, the Christian notion of resurrection drew the cemetery from the outskirts of civilization into its heartland as believers perceived the physical proximity of buried martyrs as vital to their spiritual growth.[3] As a result, the church and cemetery became interconnected elements of the faith, establishing a sanctuary for both the living and deceased Christian and pushing the unsaved souls, particularly criminals and victims of suicide, into unmarked graves outside the city limits once reserved exclusively for all interments.[4] It also established a public center for congregations and festivities, including the Palm Sunday procession, that predated and also served as the model for the town square which became common in the sixteenth century before the grand boulevards took hold in the industrial nineteenth century.[5]
Works Referenced
Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years. 1977. Trans. Helen Weaver. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2000.
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[1] Ariès, 29-30.
[2] Ariès, 29-30.
[3] Ariès, 30-33.
[4] Ariès, 42-45.
[5] Ariès, 62-71.
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